The Leopold Settles and Deaccessions

“Countess Kuefstein at the Easel” by Anton  Romako will  stay at the Leopold

The Leopold Museum in Vienna has reached an undisclosed settlement with the heir of a Jewish “construction entrepreneur”  who had his collection of art seized by the Gestapo some time before 1941. In order to pay the settlement and others, the museum will have to sell two other paintings by Egon Schiele. No one is talking of these sales in terms of deaccession, but that is what they are doing. Those Schiele works were surely in the public trust:

The Leopold Museum is selling an Egon Schiele painting, “Houses With Colorful Washing,” at a Sotheby’s (BID) auction on June 22. The cityscape is expected to fetch as much as $50 million, a record for the artist.

The revenue will help to pay for “Wally,” a portrait by Schiele that was the subject of a decades-long restitution dispute. In July last year, the museum agreed to pay $19 million to the heirs of the Jewish art dealer Lea Bondi Jaray to keep the portrait, which was stolen by the Nazis in the 1930s.

Last month, the Leopold Museum agreed to pay $5 million to the granddaughter of Jenny Steiner, a Jewish silk-factory owner, to keep in its collection “Houses by the Sea,” another Schiele painting that was stolen by the Nazis.

1. Catherine Hickley & Zoe Scheenweiss, Vienna’s Leopold Settles With Heir on Nazi-Looted Paintings, Bloomberg, June 20, 2011, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-20/vienna-s-leopold-settles-with-heir-on-nazi-looted-paintings.html (last visited Jun 21, 2011).